


Where Do We Go

by TheWonderTwins



Series: NaNoWriMo 2017 [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Holt family feels, I Always Wondered About This, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I'm Sorry, Kidge - Freeform, Pre-Relationship, So I Fic'd It, The Show Doesn't Ever Address It, season 3ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 21:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12756357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWonderTwins/pseuds/TheWonderTwins
Summary: “I don’t know w-why we never th-thought about it again, why we never ch-checked.” She was getting worked up again, tears falling freely and breathing more irregularly.“Pidge,” Keith pleaded, “I need you to spell it out for me. What didn’t we think about, what did you find?”





	Where Do We Go

**Author's Note:**

> _Title and tone for the fic inspired by Where Do We Go by Lindsey Sterling ft. Carah Faye. I love this song, it is one of my absolute favorites, and I do recommend checking it out if for no other reason than to listen to it while you read this._

The castle was usually quiet during the night cycle; Shiro--and Allura now that Shiro was missing--stressed the need for the Paladins to be healthy and maintain a ‘normal sleep schedule’ as much as possible. There wasn’t always a choice, of course, but when they had the opportunity, they were encouraged to get a full night’s sleep.

Which was fine. Unless you had insomnia like Keith, or were a workaholic like Pidge.

Or maybe he was the workaholic and she had insomnia? Sometimes Keith couldn’t tell. Hell, it was probably both.

In any case, it was not uncommon for Keith to be up late in the evening on the training deck or patrolling the castle, nor was it uncommon for Pidge to be awake on her computer somewhere. The hangar, the bridge, her room, the common room, the kitchen, the medbay; Keith had even seen her on the training deck once or twice.

What was uncommon tonight was the noise. A loud crash echoed in the hallway as Keith patrolled, so he followed it. If there was someone aboard who shouldn’t be, someone who had gotten past the sensors, he was going to stop them. He followed the noise to the bridge and was surprised to see Pidge. She was alone, none of the numerous drones she’d acquired were with her, but there was a sentry bot’s head and her laptop connected by a truly impressive number of wires, but something was off. They weren’t arranged around her like she’d been working on them, that was always a more organized chaos. This looked haphazard or…

The crash earlier. She’d thrown them maybe? Pidge was so careful with her tech, why would she toss it about?

About to ask, he stopped when he really saw her. Pidge had made herself as small as possible, curled into herself, face buried in her arms and knees. From the shaking of her shoulders Keith guessed she was crying.

Keith stepped cautiously forward. He was, as a general rule, not good with girls crying, but this was Pidge. If she needed something, if something had upset her, he’d force down the instinct to turn tail so he could help.

“Pidge…” 

She tensed and stopped moving even a little. Slowly, she raised her head out of the sanctuary of her arms just enough to look at him.

Shit. She had been crying.

He knelt down next to her. “What happened?”

She shook her head and her eyes welled with renewed tears. “C-can’t….”

He’d never seen her so upset. When they lost Shiro, she’d cried, they all had, but this was different. She could talk then, was able to put words to her thoughts and feelings, hard as they’d been. 

“C’mere.” He held his arms open and she fell into them with a broken sob.

He sat on the steps to Allura’s control station and pulled her into his arms as she cried. Keith wished Shiro was here to tell him what to say, but he wasn’t. At a loss, Keith opted to stay silent and just hold her instead. Since she wasn’t talking, Keith looked for clues. If he could figure out what had set her off, maybe he could fix it.

Her laptop would probably have the most information but it was too far away for him to reach or read clearly what was on the screen. She had to have been pulling information from the droid though, why else would it be connected. So… something she’d read in a report the bot had stored? 

Other than her laptop, the holoscreen above Coran’s consol was active. It was frozen on a scene that could have been from any number of conflicts they’d had with the Galra; all he could clearly make out was debris and a number in the corner: 241.

It held no immediate significance for him. It was just a number. 

There wasn’t anything else. The laptop, the droid, and the number together told Pidge something that had reduced her to abject sobbing. 

Grief, his mind supplied. He’d been like this when his father had died… 

But, they didn’t know where Pidge’s family was. That droid certainly wouldn’t have had access to classified prisoner transfers, and her brother had already gotten away from the Galra--though they still weren’t sure where or with who.

Pidge had found something though, and it didn’t look like good news.

“Pidge, talk to me.” He requested quietly, brushing her hair away from her face.

She shook her head again. “If I s-say it…”

It would become real. Keith moved his hand from the top of her head down to her neck and rubbed at the knots. He couldn’t banish the nightmare scenario she’d imagined with platitudes, and he couldn’t refute with logic if he didn’t have the story. All he could do was offer this until she gave him more to work with, but he’d give it as long as she needed it.

Finally, after a few minutes, still trembling from the tears, she whispered, “I thought I could find him.” 

“Your dad.” Keith clarified. She nodded. “The droid?”

“I looked for procedural protocols in the code. It wouldn’t know where he was taken, but it might have told me what standard procedure would be for prisoner transport. F-from there I thought I could ext-trapolate a likely place to start looking, but…” She took a too-deep breath and bit her lip, clenching her jaw while she fought the tears that were still trying to steal her voice. 

Keith waited for her to continue when she was ready. 

“Do you remember our first mission?” She asked, which was not what he’d been expecting, but he was used to not always following her logical processes. Her mind worked much faster than his did in most cases, and he was used to going along while she explained.

“When we went after Red?” 

She nodded. “We boarded that cruiser intent on getting the Red Lion, but then Shiro said he’d been there before.”

“You two went after the prisoners hoping to find your family, and you got the prisoners to an escape pod.”

“I don’t know w-why we never th-thought about it again, why we never ch-checked.” She was getting worked up again, tears falling freely and breathing more irregularly. 

“Pidge,” Keith pleaded, “I need you to spell it out for me. What didn’t we think about, what did you find?”

“Protocol for transport is to move prisoners to cruiser class starships, where security is heaviest, but cruisers are also the heavy hitters. Regardless of prisoners awaiting transportation, they’re the ones called to battle.” Pidge explained, pained expression crossing her face. “Like with Voltron.”

Keith was starting to see the trail of her logic, but part of him rebelled. She couldn’t possibly be thinking… 

“Do you know how many battle cruisers we’ve destroyed?” She gasped for breath as she sped them toward her ultimate destination.

He looked at the holoscreen again, “Two hundred and forty-one.”

She turned to look up at him and her face crumpled, “Keith, what if we killed my father?”

Keith’s breath left him harshly as the impact of her question took him completely off-guard. He clutched tightly to his friend as she broke all over again and thought quickly. There had to be something that she’d missed, or some fault in her logic that he could use to show her she hadn’t _killed her own father._

“You can’t give up, Pidge.” He urged. Fucking platitudes. Keith hated himself a little for not being able to give her anything else. “There are thousands-- _tens of thousands_ \--of Galra cruisers and not all of them carry prisoners; your father could still be alive.”

She took several deep breaths and he continued to massage her neck and shoulders. Only when she’d managed a few breaths without hitching sobs, she fairly collapsed, limp in his arms, and said. “I know, but Keith… we can’t just indiscriminately obliterate Galra ships anymore. It’s probable that not all 241 of those cruisers had prisoners, but it’s just as probable that some of them _did_. We never even bothered to _check._ ”

“Most of the time, we barely have enough time to form Voltron before we’re fighting for our lives or the lives of others.” Keith pointed out hesitantly. “We’re doing the best we can.”

Pidge sighed mournfully, closing her eyes. “We did our best, but it wasn’t enough. We still lost. Those prisoners, my father, Shiro… we lost.” She drifted to sleep, worn out from crying and emotional turmoil.

Had they really done their best? If they had, wouldn’t they still have Shiro? Would they have to worry about the lives of innocents dead at their hands?

There had to be something else. Anything.

His mind raced. If there was one thing that Keith was actually better at than Pidge, it was combat. Tactics and strategy may not come to him as easily as they had for Shiro, but he was still competent when he applied himself.

For this, for Pidge, he’d apply his entire self.

Patience yields focus. Think it through. What did they need in order to accomplish their goal? One, a way to quickly determine whether or not prisoners were aboard Galra ships. Hacking the ship’s manifest wouldn’t be quick or possible from a remote location, so that was out. They did have the BLIP tech though; they’d used it on the Balmera to determine Galra troop locations which meant it could discriminate between Galra and non-Galra lifeforms. Problem with the BLIP tech was that it wasn’t a large range scanner, it had required dropping pods to scan the caverns. So, two, they needed a better delivery system for the BLIP tech. The Blue Lion was equipped with a powerful scanner capable of quickly scanning a large area to deliver a detailed layout. If they could somehow combine the two, they’d have a way to scan an entire ship for prisoners and get their precise location aboard. Then they could either mount a rescue or be more selective in their targeting, saving as many lives as they could.

It wasn’t perfect, of course, it would still take some time and would have to be done while they were in their individual Lions, but it was better than nothing. He’d talk to the others about it tomorrow. 

For now, he stood up, careful not to disturb the girl sleeping in his arms, and carried her to her bed. He tried to lay her down, but she was holding onto his jacket in a vice-like grip. Unwilling to disturb her, he simply took off the jacket. He settled Pidge on her bed and put his jacket over her before backing out of the room. Part of him wished he could lay down with her rather than just leave his jacket, but he didn’t know if that would be well received and he didn’t want to overstep. Instead, he turned off the light and went to his own room. 

Tomorrow was going to be a long day.


End file.
